Custom design, Joomla CMS, Search Engine submissions, Hosting

A simple and clean look that conveys the quality of the products and services on offer.

I’m glad to see that the new year is off to a cracking start, with the arrival of my brand new baby son we named Javier (Jay-Vee-er) although he was already 41 weeks old when I meet him, and many new clients choosing GA Hawkey Web Services to help them get great results online for their businesses.

I’m also looking forward to learning more and more about some great new tools and platforms that have landed in the industry, like the release of Joomla 1.6. I’m also looking forward to the Matter Solutions SEO Workshop next week (Jan 19), where I’m looking forward to catching up with Ben and the guys, meeting some new webmasters, and learning more about the clarity of proper SEO.

Give me a shout if you want to discuss some options and strategies to help your business grow and thrive on the web this year!

I like to see clever uses of gadgets outside their intended purpose. This clip puts the iPad to interesting use in a visual way, but that’s not the end of it. The lady in the clip is a DJ who uses two iPads instead of turntables or laptops. Check out her website for more info.

Side note: They also shot the clip with an iPhone 4 on day of release.

I have just begun reading a book I’ve heard mentioned quite a lot in the recent past (particularly on the TWiT podcast). ‘Grown Up Digital‘ by Don Tapscot is the follow on from his previous book ‘Growing Up Digital‘. Don is also well known for his other popular title ‘Wikinomics‘.

I’m only in the early stages of this book, but I look forward to seeing his take on how current generations (like my young daughter and soon-to-be-born son) who are growing up in the digital age, not only being very comfortable and proficient with modern tech and the web, but also take it for granted.

Do you have kids growing up in the ‘net generation’?

Custom design, WordPress CMS, Search Engine submissions, Hosting

A site the specifically highlight the Wedding Photography of Angela Hawkey.

Internet Exporer 9, the latest incarnation of the Microsoft web browser, has recently been released in beta form Release Candidate, so it’s meant to be pretty much feature complete.

I’m not going to bore you with another comparison list, as that has already been done to great effect by Arstechnica. But there is something else that recently came to attention in a BOL podcast episode, something that made me think about addoption patterns when Microsoft’s new browser hits the streets in completed form.

Much of the problem I face with browser compatibilities as a developer stem from IE6 and it’s somewhat ridiculously large share of the installed browser market. All web developers and front end developers will tell you how they hate having to write conditional CSS and markup code just for IE6, in effect doubling up on the code they need to generate for each website or webapp project. So the development community can’t wait for it to fade into oblivion… if only.

So it mainly comes down to a couple of key things:

1. Some users are living under very large rocks and don’t realise the risks they are taking by sticking to IE6 and ignoring the repeated suggestions to upgrade curtesy of Windows Update and websites with warning curtain screens.
2. The majority of IE6 users are stuck with corporate SOE (Standard Operating Environments) due to the company’s custom internal apps and intranets specifically written with DirectX components that are only present in IE6 (for various reasons!).

…letting XP run the new browser is only encouraging them to stick with the old OS version where they are nice and comfy.

So because IE9 won’t run on WindowsXP, which is the version of Windows that most of these corporates with SOEs are running, IE9 won’t help them make the choice to upgrade. Besides, there is still no ActiveX support beyond IE6 anyway (correct me if I’m wrong).

Then the reason for this might be due to Microsoft wanting to get these corporate installations to upgrade from XP to Windows7 (common… for goodness sake), and letting XP run the new browser is only encouraging them to stick with the old OS version where they are nice and comfy.

Either way, in this regard it seams ‘lose lose’.

At least for those users who can and do upgrade every so often, and haven’t been convinced to switch one of the better browsers so far, IE9 looks set to catch them up somewhat to enjoy what the rest of us have been taking for granted for so long: speed, nicer rendering closer to standards compliance, and extensions!

What’s your take on this next phase of the Internet Explorer legacy?

Custom Design, Front End Development, Static HTML, Forms

This was a quick little site that came together on a limited budget. Shout out to Adam at atticus51 for the marketing too.

Custom design & Front End Development, Joomla CMS, Search Engine submissions, Hosting

Edgy and clean design to put the FTV logo to work, while making the content easy to focus on.

Custom design, WordPress CMS, Search Engine submissions, Hosting

This is a clean and simple site to highlight the professional photography of Angela Hawkey.

Visit the site

Joomla CMS, Custom Design, Forms

A new company who make the process of tendering much simpler, as well as filtering through your best prospects.